This issue started in August as one short essay. I have rebuilt it, because the useful part was always the arithmetic.
01 | Your redundancy letter has a headline number
Most people assume the moment that changes everything is a decision. You decide to sell, or to leave. A redundancy is the other kind. A phone call, a Monday morning meeting, a role that existed on Friday and doesn't the following week.
I have been on the receiving end, and I knew the headline rules perfectly well, including that the first £30,000 is usually tax free. The figures were never the difficult part. The difficult part was that the number on the letter and the number I could actually plan with were not the same number.
Only the first £30,000 of genuine redundancy pay is tax free. Pay instead of working your notice, holiday pay and bonus are fully taxable, and National Insurance applies to them as well. That split decides what lands in your bank.
Take £100,000 paid entirely as notice pay. A top rate taxpayer can be left with around £53,000. Split the same £100,000 as £30,000 redundancy and £70,000 notice pay, and it can be closer to £67,000. Same headline, about £14,000 apart. Those figures include National Insurance and assume a top rate taxpayer in England, and Scotland differs.
The statutory part is smaller than people expect. It is a formula built on age, length of service and weekly pay, and because the weekly pay is capped, it barely moves however much you earn.
So before you plan anything, ask how your package is split between redundancy pay, notice pay, holiday pay and bonus. The letter will not volunteer it. HR will answer if you ask.
Once you have the real figure, the free redundancy runway calculator will tell you how many months it covers. Use the amount that lands in your bank, not the headline. The page now says so in a box under the payout field, after a reader pointed out, fairly, that it was easy to miss.
Correct as at 15 October 2026. The Budget is on 28 October and tax-free limits are the sort of thing it could touch, so check the GOV.UK pages below before relying on any of this. This is education, not advice.
02 | What I did with my daughter before the money started arriving
In a recent post I wrote about what I'd tell my kids about their first salary. That was the principle. This is what I actually did.
My daughter is now in her job, so we sat down and worked it out properly, starting from the payslip and working down. What comes in, what is already spoken for, what is left. We set up her pension contribution so the employer match was being claimed from the start, and we built a budget she can run herself, one line at a time. I walked her through every step.
She was very grateful, and she sent me a card afterwards. I wasn't particularly surprised, but I was very glad to get it, because it is not always easy for a dad to see that his help and guidance have landed. Bringing them up with the right discipline, attitude and respect for other people is the most important part of the job. Teaching them the fundamentals of money is a big goal of mine as well, and this felt like it was working. The card called me the best dad ever. I have filed it away, in case that view changes the next time I say no.
What struck me afterwards was how little of it was clever. A budget, a pension contribution and a habit of looking at both. Most of the people I hear from as adults never had that conversation with anyone, and are having it for the first time with a redundancy letter on the table.
03 | The client with the strong portfolio and nothing to talk about
Odd company for a piece about tax bands, I know. But it is the same Monday morning, with or without the money.
A retirement psychologist recently wrote about a client with no debt and a strong portfolio, about as financially secure as it gets. He was still isolated, obsessing over markets, and quietly damaging his marriage by never talking about anything else.
The explanation on offer is that people who build their identity on professional achievement don't lose the need for achievement when the work stops. They redirect it, often straight onto the portfolio itself. An 80-year Harvard study found that relationship quality, not portfolio performance, is the strongest predictor of wellbeing in later life. Not the number. Who is actually around you.
If any of this landed, forward it to someone else standing at their own fulcrum point right now, chosen or not. That's still the best way this reaches the people who need it, better than anything I can do on my end.